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Despite the surprise of his move, Marcus did not expect her to
meet his challenge so directly enabling him to secure an
instant link with her psyche. And her soul.
And for once, without hesitation, he delved his mind into
the deepest core of hers.
Aye, he rapidly discovered, she was afraid. Very afraid.
But, came the next shocking revelation, she was not afraid
he would stay.
She was terrified he would leave.
He swallowed. Then swallowed again, as the glimmer of a
tear swelled in her right eye. A tear she tried to fight back but
lost; the heavy drop defied her with a slow descent across her
smooth cheek.
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Ah, God. He knew tears like that. He had battled back tens
of thousands like them. Tears of rejection. And anger. Of
frustration . . . and aloneness.
Of all the pain he had known himself over the last two
hundred eighty years.
And now, terror gripped him, too.
God's blood. What have you started, Danewell?
"Gabriela." Though he whispered it, raw torment
permeated his voice. He slid his finger from her chin to her
cheek, tenderly retracing the path left by her tear. He tried,
without succeeding, not to meet her gaze again. Lost; he
found himself hopelessly lost in the dark copper beauty of her
gaze.
"Oh, Gabriela." The more hard-edged mutter helped him
regain a measure of control. But not enough to hold him back
from saying, "You . . . were working on Hamlet, were you
not?"
* * * *
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FIVE
* * * *
Gabriela broke into a watery grin.
She couldn't help herself. She also had a devastating urge
to hug him, but she quelched the temptation with the
memory of his reaction when she'd only touched his hand last
night.
Not that he made it at all easy. Her body clenched, battling
the need to sway closer to him as his features changed again
. . . his eyelids lowering, his fingers raising to roam her
cheek. His firm lips parted, as if the picture in her mind
became the fantasy in his, too.
Dear God. A woman could lose herself in that look.
All of herself.
As in hopes, dreams and goals, too.
Again as if he read her soul more clearly than the acts in a
programme, Marcus yanked himself back. Yet as he did, her
heart slammed to another stop. Somewhere in an
unnameable part of her mind, Gaby swore she heard, in the
most fervent whisper: I cannot touch you. Sweet God,
Gabriela, I could never hurt you.
But before she could work her jaw around a stammering
reaction, Marcus found her script atop a prop boulder and
started to thumb the worn pages. So blithely, as if he'd
heard or said nothing.
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"So." He braced his bent knee to the boulder and the script
to his knee. "My mate Augustus is actually staging the great
Hamlet, is he?"
It took a few moments for Gaby to realize he lent a voice
to the words this time. "What? Oh . . . yes. We begin
rehearsals in three weeks, but I want to prepare more
thoroughly. This production is particularly important to me."
He turned another page, noting her marked lines and cues
there. "Ophelia is that tightly entwined to your soul, then?"
She frowned. "I beg your pardon?"
"'Tis a play close to your affections. You just said so. And
you stay so late, laboring on your lines. Surely, it is because
you liken yourself to the poor Ophelia."
"I do not." She sputtered, incredulous. "Great saints,
whatever gave you this is just the role Augustus assigned to
me! I'm going to learn it and perform it as best as I can,
but well " She threw him a perturbed glance. "Ophelia was
a lovesick sagmop who drove herself insane because of a
man."
He lowered the script and slanted a stare back at her. A
vast, ceaseless stare, unfaltering as polished pewter. "And
you have never wanted to go insane because of love?"
Gaby fired back another snort.
And that maddening man on the boulder continued his
unnerving scrutiny. By the stars, didn't he ever blink?
Marcus redeposited the script atop the boulder and paced
toward her. "Are you telling me your heart has never been
broken, Gabriela Rozina? That you have not lost so much or
grieved so deeply that you wanted to die, too?"
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Dear God, her soul cried back. More times than you'll ever
know. More times than you want to know.
But his eyes told her he already knew that.
His eyes told her he wanted to know more.
A more she'd never give anyone.
Gabriela dropped her head. She jerked up her skirts,
attempting to sidestep the approaching scoundrel, but Marcus
moved three steps ahead, slicing each escape route short. He
always seemed to move three steps ahead.
"Look," she gritted as they squared off for the fourth time,
"I said the production was important to me, not the role. And
I never said it was 'close to my affections'."
"Ahhh," came his knowing reply. "Yes, how could I have
forgotten? You have that honor reserved for the Prince's
Grand Theatre Troupe."
She didn't question how he knew that. Between the
teasing she weathered from the rest of the cast and the
reminders she railed at herself during her extra rehearsals,
the man didn't need Pasteur's genius to deduce where her
aspirations lie.
Instead, Gabriela dared another gaze up at him. But this
time, she met his examination with pride, perhaps a little
defiance. All right; a lot of defiance.
"Yes," she finally stated. "Making the Troupe is my
ultimate dream. There's nothing wrong with that."
Marcus held up both hands. "Nothing at all."
His lips remained a solemn line, but now his eyes smiled.
The combination befuddled her. Gaby didn't know whether to
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embrace him for his understanding, or slap him for his
insolence.
"You're serious, aren't you?" she said in lieu of either
choice. "You truly think I can do this?"
She honestly didn't know how he'd respond to that. She
only knew her imagination didn't include Marcus sweeping her
beyond clueless, and into speechless. He did it by first sliding
his hands into hers, and lifting them to his lips gingerly as
crystal roses. His kiss to her knuckles was the barest brush of
a touch . . . she didn't even feel his breath on her skin, he
was so slow and reverent . . .
And then she didn't feel her breath any more, either. She'd
never fainted before, but certainly this sensation counted as
the prelude to such. A tingled fuzz replaced her brain, and
languid warmth flowed through her cells instead of her blood.
Marcus's murmur, low and musical, only spun his spell
thicker. "I think," he told her, "that you can do anything,
dream anything and become anything you want."
For a moment, she didn't move. Then she squeezed his
hands to test if this moment was real, unable to hold back her
joy from bursting on a misty laugh when nothing changed
except an odd drop of his left eyebrow.
"This is I mean, you are " she tried to explain to his
puzzled expression. "It's just that you're the first to ever
believe in me."
"Nay," Marcus countered. "You were the first."
She shook her head. "But I'm not important."
"Is that what Alfonso told you?"
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Gaby jerked her hands down and turned from him,
needing to physically move at just the words from his mouth.
She should have known. Blast; he knew everything else about
her life, didn't he? That didn't make it less frustrating that
he'd brought up the one thorn that could ruin this sweet
bouquet of a conversation.
"Alfonso is " she stammered, "it's a complicated " An
irritated huff escaped her. She took several more steps. "I will
just thank you to leave the subject alone."
"He is a clod. You know that, do you not?"
She snapped back around. His voice loomed directly
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